For the third straight year, Lexus, Infiniti and Saturn took the top three rankings in the 1995 J.D. Power & Associates' annual survey of driver's satisfaction. Acura, a unit of Honda Motor Co., and Sweden's AB Volvo tied for the fourth spot. The influential Agoura Hills-based marketing firm said Tuesday that the car business as a whole improved its performance three points on Power's Customer Satisfaction Index, scoring 138 of a possible 202.

Charles W. O. Ellwood, an English-born car designer who has spent the bulk of his career in Germany, had an automotive epiphany when he arrived in Southern California last October to take the helm at Volkswagen's Simi Valley design studio. American drivers' fascination with cup holders, he says, suddenly made sense. "You can't drive the speeds we drive in Europe and use cup holders. It's just too dangerous," says Ellwood, 39, formerly chief of interior design at Volkswagen in Wolfsburg, Germany.

In the city of freeways and money, there are plenty of car collectors but few who employed a curator. That rare yet so very L.A. title was held for 26 years by James B. Duffy III, who lovingly and painstakingly took care of the late Willet H. Brown's collection of antique cars, celebrity-owned cars and rare sports cars.

When it comes to car reliability, Detroit still takes a back seat to Japan, according to the April issue of Consumer Reports magazine. The magazine's annual auto edition, which hits the streets next week, calculated an overall "trouble rate" for more than 300 of the 1993 model vehicles based on owner complaints for 1990, 1991 and 1992 models. The report concluded that Japan still builds more reliable cars and trucks than Detroit's Big Three car manufacturers, but the gap is narrowing.

"Excuse me, sir, there, with the baby, have you ever driven a car 170 miles per hour?" Shawn Sisti joked with a bystander. As the sales manager for his replica of the Lamborghini Countach, Sisti was doing his best to attract attention to the red razor blade of a car.

Chrysler Corp. plans to produce and sell cars powered by a smaller, lighter, more fuel efficient engine by the mid-1990s, the No. 3 auto maker said Tuesday. The company said it will develop and produce a two-stroke engine in a joint venture with Mercury Marine, a manufacturer of boat engines known for its expertise in making two-strokes. Both Chrysler and Mercury Marine declined to disclose their financial investment in the project.

The race for bragging rights as the first major auto firm in modern times to build electric vehicles for sale in this country gets serious today. Chrysler Corp.'s celebrity pitchman and chairman, Lee A. Iacocca, is expected to announce plans to begin factory production in December of the first federally certified electric vehicle to be sold in the United States. How many?

Despite offering steeper discounts on its vehicles, Chrysler Corp. reported record first-quarter earnings of more than $1 billion on the strength of hefty profit from its newest sport-utility vehicle and sedans. The Auburn Hills, Mich.-based auto maker overcame rebates averaging $1,230 per vehicle--$520 higher than a year ago--with increased sales of such high-profit vehicles as the new Dodge Durango sport-utility. The No.

For the first time ever, a Japanese car--the Honda Accord--has become the best-selling model in America. Sales figures for 1989, released Thursday by the auto industry, provide yet another sign of Japan's increasing dominance over Detroit's troubled auto makers. Yet the Accord's stunning rise also underlines the growing importance within the auto industry of the rapidly expanding U.S. manufacturing operations of Japanese companies such as Honda.

The Federal Reserve Board announced new rules Wednesday intended to make automobile leases clearer and requiring standard cost figures and contracts. The rules will require leasing companies to prominently disclose the key elements of the deal, including the car's cost, required down payment, and charges for excess wear and tear, excess mileage and terminating the lease early.